Maggini Quartet - String Quartets 1 & 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Founded in 2005, the Escher String Quartet is still a young ensemble as string quartets go. It has nevertheless become established as one of the most exciting quartets around, both in it's home country, the U.S.A., and elsewhere, recently being shortlisted for a BBC Music Magazine Award. With their début disc on BIS, the Eschers launch a three-disc cycle of Mendelssohn's string quartets, including the unnumbered String Quartet in E flat major and - on coming instalments - the four pieces for string quartet Op.81. The quartet genre accompanied Mendelssohn throughout his life, from the previously mentioned E flat major quartet - which he composed at the age of 14 - to String Quartet No.6 in F minor, his last major work, completed only two months before his death in 1847. As a body, the quartets demonstrate many of Mendelssohn's finest qualities as a composer - his fascination for and understanding of the music of both Bach and Beethoven, his affinity for string instruments, and that gift for melody as well as texture which has made his Lieder ohne Worte and the elfin music to A Midsummer Night's Dream so eternally popular. Composed in 1829, the Quartet Op.12 is still an early work - from the time of the Hebrides Overture - while the E minor quartet, Op.44 No.2, can be counted as one of the first master-pieces by the mature composer.

Though Miklos Rozsa became one of the most admired film composers, he had always written music in other forms and his two published string quartets reveal important facets of his musical background. String Quartet No. 1 was written in 1950 when he was under contract with MGM and, with it's nocturnal and folk-dance imagery, is redolent of his Hungarian youth. String Quartet No. 2 is prophetic of his later sparer style, though it too is infused with great energy and high drama. The String Trio, Op. 1, recorded for the first time in it's original 1929 published version, abounds with youthful vitality.

For the first time in more than fifteen years, the debut album Way Their Crept by Grouper is being made available on LP and CD, reissued in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the original . The first in a series of ineffable solo albums and collaborations that have come since, these are the initial sounds widely shared by the artist on a long journey of explorations that continue to this day.InchThis is ambient music that refuses to simply wash over the listener; it's a riptide dragging you under.Inch -The New Yorker InchWithin the carefully pared back framework, [Liz] Harris creates a subtle tension and that forms the emotional core of the album.Inch -Crack Magazine InchThese songs are easy to feel but hard to remember, like they're trying to wipe your mind clean and succeeding. And while there has to be something distinct about Harris's sound, you can spend hours rolling it around inside your head, searching for secret ingredients that might not exist.Inch -The Washington Post InchThe chain reaction these songs generate together produces enough fog and smoke to keep the spell going strong-and to keep whatever secret she's trying to tell us just on the other side of the speakers.Inch -Pitchfork InchEach track sounds, in the best possible way, like it was never meant to be heard outside of the room in which it was recorded.Inch -New York Times